Genes cannot be selfish or unselfish, any more than atoms can be jealous,
elephants abstract or biscuits teleological.
Genes cannot be selfish or unselfish, any more than atoms can be jealous,
elephants abstract or biscuits teleological.
Dawkins, however, simply has a weakness for the old game of Brocken-spectre moralizing—the one where the player strikes attitudes on a peak at sunrise, gazes awe-struck at his gigantic shadow on the clouds, and reports his observations as cosmic truths. He is an uncritical philosophic egoist in the first place, and merely feeds the egoist assumption into his a priori biological speculations, only rarely glancing at the relevant facts of animal behaviour and genetics, and ignoring their failure to support him. There is nothing empirical about Dawkins.
cellular consciousness — Pop
A person is always in a process of self organization. — Pop
For Midgley, to call a person ‘rational’ does not mean they are clever; it means that they have organised themselves – their natural yet conflicting needs and wants – into a coherent whole, in this messy world.
In the process of self organization we have to make decisions, and ultimately the decisions we make have either painful or pleasurable consequences, and wherever possible we tend to choose the decisions that have pleasurable consequences rather then the most responsible / altruistic ones. — Pop
Genes cannot be selfish or unselfish, any more than atoms can be jealous,
elephants abstract or biscuits teleological.
Here's the core of her rebuttal of The Selfish Gene:
Genes cannot be selfish or unselfish, any more than atoms can be jealous,
elephants abstract or biscuits teleological.
Glorious! — Banno
All I can see from your quotes is that Mary Midgley is dissing someone you don't like. — SophistiCat
So she doesn't understand metaphor. — Kenosha Kid
Actually, I admire Dawkins. — Banno
Finish the first paragraph, where she talks about his use of Metaphor, and get back to us. — Banno
But in fairness to Mary, he forgets that completely in the body of the book and takes himself literally. — unenlightened
What's Lost? — Banno
Evolutionary biologists agree Dawkins is junk science. — frank
Reference? — Kenosha Kid
Find a lecture by PZ Myers. Dawkins is an adaptationist. That's basically Nazi science. — frank
There seems to be a somewhat pervasive misunderstanding, Dawkins hasn't really contributed much to the primary literature, his Selfish Gene book was basically a popularized synthesized compilation of the work of influential evolutionary biologists: Williams, Hamilton, Trivers, etc. No one thinks those figures contributed junk science, but it's just an extremely narrow perspective if you leave it at them. — Saphsin
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